A microchip manufacturing process may deposit various material layers on a wafer and form a photosensitive film or photoresist on one or more deposited layers. A lithography tool may transmit light through transmissive optics or reflect light from reflective optics to a reticle or patterned mask. Light from the reticle transfers a patterned image onto the photoresist. Portions of the photoresist which are exposed to light may be removed. Portions of the wafer which are not protected by the remaining photoresist may be etched to form transistor features.
The semiconductor industry may continue to reduce the size of transistor features to increase transistor density and improve transistor performance. This reduction in transistor feature size has driven a reduction in the wavelength of light used in lithography tools to define smaller transistor features on a photoresist.